


Their Faces Bleed

by crookedneighbour



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bleak, Creepy, Drabble, Experimental Style, F/M, Gen, Halloween, Human Sacrifice, Memories, Murder, Murder Kink, Mutilation, Other, Pseudo-Necrophelia, This Got Weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 02:24:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedneighbour/pseuds/crookedneighbour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roose keeps the Old Ways and makes his yearly sacrifice to the Old Gods. He thinks of the dead and the living.</p><p>A Halloween Drabble</p>
            </blockquote>





	Their Faces Bleed

He does this once a year. The girl (it was a boy last year) is still unconscious. He didn't need the unwanted attention of her screams when he took her. Roose stands alone in the grove, except for the body, a pink and black silhouette among the darkness of the woods. He can feel the eyes on him though, their bleeding stares watching him as he tilts her body up against the tree. He no longer has to to hide. No one comes here. They say the ghost of dead Boltons hunt you down.

( _If you're lucky... It's worse to be hunted by the living ones_ ) 

Her dark hair hangs in front of her face, and her clothes are wet from the snow. She's thin the same way a bird is, the larger parts of her body still seeming round and smoothed. He draws his father's knife. Or rather the knife his aunt gave him the day his father died... 

( _Its yours now, Roose. All of it_.)

He gets onto his knees, a leg straddling each side of her lap. It's cold even through his clothes and leathers. He tilts her head up, exposing the vulnerable skin of her neck ( _he tries not to enjoy it too much_ ). The flayed man is in his hand and the point is at her neck. He draws it across slowly, watching the blood immediately well up and pour from her wound.

_Rovan Bolton. Wyalla Bolton. Lyandra Bolton..._

He doesn't say their names out loud. He doesn't need to.

_Alys Bolton, Bethany Bolton..._

As the snow beneath her turns red, he forces her head back. He can see the exposed meat of her throat and the faces of his dead sons in equal parts.

_Domeric Bolton, Randyl Bolton, Barden Bolton...._

He's never been haunted by the people's he's killed or watched die. He sometimes imagines them in passing moments or with Walda pressed beneath him, but there's never any real regret or loss in it. 

The next list is longer. It starts with his grandfather and goes back to the first men. He used to sit with Domeric who would recopy the book to learn his family's names. If Roose is still alive when it's finished, _when he is the last one,_ it will be the first book he doesn't burn. 

( _"A sickness of the gut," lies under Domeric's name, and Ramsay is yet to even know of the record's existence_ )

His cold eyes meet with the weir wood's grimacing face, and it stares back unchanging. The thick sap slowly oozes from it's eyes, and the leaves rustle around him. He cuts her stained clothes from the girl and puts them to the side. 

Her skin is pale from the cold and the blood has spilled on her neck and chest. He turns her over, and flicks her hair out of the way. 

He crouches over her, working carefully to remove the skin in one piece. It's much easier when they're dead already, though he thinks the gods prefer the other way ( _they wouldn't have made him take more pleasure if..._ ). It would be an insult anyway, offering them scraps and shreds instead of their full due.

Her raw flesh glistens as the steam rises, and his gloves soon grow sticky. _He takes his time with it._ When he butchers the remains, he's still proud of his work, the full hide buried below the soil. 

It gets harder to break through the frozen dirt each year, but he does it anyway. There may come a time he can't do it alone. Ramsay may not be ready, but Roose will have to use him. It feels achingly familiar.

The piles of meat and bone go back to the river and Roose goes back to the Dreadfort. Walda doesn't ask where he went. 

_If I want to tell you my affairs, I will._

She takes his gloves off first and kisses his fingers. She's warm.

_I want to give you a son._

He takes his time with her too. He touches her everywhere he didn't touch the corpse, and she moans and squeals for him in all the ways the girl didn't. He's satisfied enough ( _the urge is sated at least_ ). 

He closes his eyes as Walda places the leeches on his bare chest. 

_His mind is empty._


End file.
